Hi Jeanette,
I agree with you. There's quite a bit of confusion in the field as to what personal development is exactly–and what it is not. I shall do my best at clarifying what personal development is for you.
What is Personal Development?
Personal development is the enhancement of specific life skills which are necessary to facilitate happiness and success in one's personal life. These life skills are the basic building blocks that form all the success or failures that you have in life. Personal development skills become the foundation from which all your achievements in life flow from and it has a direct relationship with winning and life success.
One key distinction between personal development skills and other skills that you might possess is that personal development skills are used 24 hours each day, whereas you may only be using your programming skills eight hours a day in the capacity of your employment. When you talk to someone, you are using personal development skills. What you decide to eat is personal development. When you investigate your feelings–that's personal development. Even managing your sleeping habits belongs in personal development.
Personal development skills are life skills that must be honed in order to reap the benefits of a life worth living. The investment of time in developing yourself personally leads to a peak performing individual who lives a more fulfilling life than those who do not choose to develop themselves.
What Personal Development is Not
Personal development does not involve diagnosing or treating an illness or injury. There seems to be a general confusion in the personal development field concerning what it is and what it is not and since there are so many books at bookstores and libraries that miscatagorize mental illness books into the self-improvement section of the store, let me clarify that point. A key characteristic of someone who wants to practice personal development is that they are generally healthy and normal individuals who are able and willing to move forward in their lives. In other words, they want to become peak-performing individuals.
On the other hand, a person who is not able or willing to move forward in their life and pursue happiness and life success due to past illness, traumas or injuries that prevent them from doing so are in need of treatment or therapy to aid in their recovery. These are individuals who are not performing normally and their goal is to be performing at a normal capacity. In other words, they want to recover.
Personal Development's Many Other Faces
In the scope of my own coaching practice, I view personal development, self-improvement, and personal growth as all the same thing. I view self-help as slightly different than personal development in that self-help topics tend to be less focused on personal growth and more on remedying a certain condition, hence, that is why there are many books in the self-help sections of bookstores and libraries that focus on treatment of problems, rather than on creating peak performance.
The Ten Components of Personal Development
The definition of personal development will vary from person to person, but through my experience as a personal development coach and former police officer, I've discovered that there are in fact ten key areas that comprise an individual's peak performance. These areas of focus are:
Life Purpose: Having a life purpose gives meaning to all the activities and goals that you set for your entire life. We all know how to use up the time that we have in life, but unless we give meaning to those activities that occupy our time, then our lives will utterly be without meaning.